


selective criteria

by inverse



Category: Naruto
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-03-17
Updated: 2006-03-17
Packaged: 2017-10-31 12:06:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/343855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inverse/pseuds/inverse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>blindfolded control experiments.</p>
            </blockquote>





	selective criteria

The next time Sasuke meets Gaara they are both twenty and inflicted with the common disease of xenophobia. Not so much afraid of strangers than a mixture of both that and the ridiculous inability to identify with others. For Sasuke it’s something which he had come dangerously close to when he was twelve but in the end had given up out of circumstance.

“Circumstance my foot,” Naruto had said when Sasuke tried to explain why he left in the first place. “It was your own bleeding choice.” Choice made due to circumstance, he thinks, and leaves it his own secret belief.

So when Gaara visits Konoha Sasuke avoids him, but he gets forced into hanging around him anyway because Naruto and Sakura insist (“It’s not like you have many friends anyway,” Naruto sneers, and Sakura giggles and asks him to shut it while Sasuke thinks through how true this is). Later on he realises that Gaara shies away from crowds if he can and promptly keeps quiet when anyone he doesn’t know very well enters the room, even people like Kakashi and Neji and Shikamaru, people whom he’s met before. Sasuke reckons that if people were to be categorised he would get sealed up into a parcel with Gaara and shipped to the same place to tough it out for the rest of their lives, two socially ineffective statues.

*

When Naruto is around his loudness and brashness wards off any sort of awkwardness there is, but when he’s not the tension is as tight as a pulled string, wound around their fingers like the strings on a puppet master’s. Sasuke sits with his chin propped up on his hands, defensively silent, and observes Gaara (who sits rather politely with his scratched, scarred hands in his lap, never staring back).

Five minutes later Gaara surprises him by initiating conversation. “You don’t like to talk.”

“No,” Sasuke replies in all honesty – he is not a liar and he probably never will be, and there is no point in lying to Gaara, just because. “You know the time we all went for the chuunin examinations,” Gaara continues, and Sasuke blinks.

“Yes,” he says, and realises that he has been giving monosyllabic answers like he just picked up the language and was incapable of replying in full sentences. It also makes him sound more autistic than Gaara is. Both are not true. He heaves a sigh and says, “I can’t remember it all that well. I thought you didn’t like to talk, either,” when he had really meant to ask, “Why are you talking so much today?”

Gaara goes quiet for a bit, stares at him and contemplates his reply so hard that Sasuke has to look away for a while. He’s gotten used to being anti-reactive. Then Gaara looks up and says, “Remember when I said we were both the same sort of people?” and Sasuke suddenly remembers the strange little boy who found his way up onto the cliffs and told him, “I know we’re the same sort of person – I can see how lonely you are.” He remembers being angry and provoked and excited, remembers the thrill of being presented with a challenge that had threw itself at his feet.

“Yes,” he says, “And so?” and Gaara stands up and brushes nonexistent dust off his robes. All the while Sasuke keeps his eyes trained on Gaara’s face. Finally he answers, without looking at Sasuke at all, “I just answered your question, that’s all,” and stalks off towards the balcony where it is significantly brighter.

Naruto bursts into the room carrying a tray of food with Sakura poking her head in behind him. He asks, “Oh hey, where’s Gaara? Don’t tell me he’s gone, I had to go three floors down to – ” and Sasuke interrupts him, “Balcony,” and imagines the feel of fine sand against his own hand.


End file.
